24th Annual Lambda Literary Award Winners Announced in New York
Cross posted: http://www.lambdaliterary.org/features/06/05/24th-annual-lambda-literary-award-winners-announced-in-new-york/
Congrats to all the winners, glad for Dirk Vanden and Jim Provenzano, this year it was hard to choose among friends with a nomination :-) Very happy for Laura Baumbach and her MLR Press, Steve Berman and Lethe Press, and for Bold Strokes Books, and nice to see that Farzana Doctor succeded in the Lammies like she did with the Rainbow Awards last year. Very deserved Michael Bronski's award, I love A Queer History of United States.
Lesbian Fiction: Six Metres of Pavement, by Farzana Doctor, Dundrun Press
Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Dundurn (February 17, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1554887674
ISBN-13: 978-1554887675
Amazon: Six Metres of Pavement
Ismail Boxwala made the worst mistake of his life one summer morning twenty years ago: he forgot his baby daughter in the back seat of his car. After his daughter's tragic death, he struggles to continue living. A divorce, years of heavy drinking, and sex with strangers only leave him more alone and isolated. But Ismail's story begins to change after he reluctantly befriends two women: Fatima, a young queer activist kicked out of her parents' home; and Celia, his grieving Portuguese-Canadian neighbour who lives just six metres away. A slow-simmering romance develops between Ismail and Celia. Meanwhile, dangers lead Fatima to his doorstep. Each makes complicated demands of him, ones he is uncertain he can meet.
Gay Fiction: The Empty Family, by Colm Tóibín, Scribner
Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: Scribner (January 3, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 143919596X
ISBN-13: 978-1439195963
Amazon: The Empty Family
Colm Tóibín’s exquisitely written new stories, set in present-day Ireland, 1970s Spain and nineteenthcentury England, are about people linked by love, loneliness and desire. Tóibín is a master at portraying mute emotion, intense intimacies that remain unacknowledged or unspoken. In this stunning collection, he cements his status as “his generation’s most gifted writer of love’s complicated, contradictory power” (Los Angeles Times). “Silence” is a brilliant historical set piece about Lady Gregory, widowed and abandoned by her lover, who tells the writer Henry James a confessional story at a dinner party. In “Two Women,” an eminent Irish set designer, aloof and prickly, takes a job in her homeland, and is forced to confront devastating emotions she has long repressed. “The New Spain” is the story of an intransigent woman who returns home after a decade in exile and shatters the fragile peace her family has forged in the post-Franco world. And in the breathtaking long story “The Street,” Tóibín imagines a startling relationship between two Pakistani workers in Barcelona-a taboo affair in a community ruled by obedience and silence. Tóibín’s characters are often difficult and combative, compelled to disguise their vulnerability and longings. Yet he unmasks them, and in doing so offers us a set of extraordinarily moving stories that remind us of the fragility and individuality of human life. As The New York Review of Books has said, Tóibín “understands the tenuousness of love and comfort-and, after everything, its necessity.”
Lesbian Debut Fiction: Zipper Mouth, by Laurie Weeks, The Feminist Press
Paperback: 166 pages
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY (October 4, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1558617485
ISBN-13: 978-1558617483
Amazon: Zipper Mouth
Selected by Dave Eggers for Best American Nonrequired Reading. "Laurie Weeks' Zipper Mouth is a short tome of infinitesimal reach, a tiny star to light the land."-Eileen Myles, author of Inferno. Zipper Mouth is a brilliant rabbit hole of pitch-black hilarity, undead obsession, the horror of the everyday, and drugs drugs drugs."-Michelle Tea, co-founder of Sister Spit. In this extraordinary debut novel, Laurie Weeks captures the freedom and longing of life on the edge in New York City. Ranting letters to Judy Davis and Sylvia Plath, an unrequited fixation on a straight best friend, exalted nightclub epiphanies, devastating morning-after hangovers-Zipper Mouth chronicles the exuberance and mortification of a junkie, and transcends the chaos of everyday life.
Gay Debut Fiction: Quarantine: Stories, by Rahul Mehta, Harper Perennial
Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Harper Perennial; Original edition (May 31, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0062020455
ISBN-13: 978-0062020451
Amazon: Quarantine: Stories
With buoyant humor and incisive, cunning prose, Rahul Mehta sets off into uncharted literary territory. The characters in Quarantine-openly gay Indian-American men-are Westernized in some ways, with cosmopolitan views on friendship and sex, while struggling to maintain relationships with their families and cultural traditions. Grappling with the issues that concern all gay men-social acceptance, the right to pursue happiness, and the heavy toll of listening to their hearts and bodies-they confront an elder generation's attachment to old-country ways. Estranged from their cultural in-group and still set apart from larger society, the young men in these lyrical, provocative, emotionally wrenching, yet frequently funny stories find themselves quarantined. Already a runaway success in India, Quarantine marks the debut of a unique literary talent.
Lesbian Memoir/Biography: When We Were Outlaws: A Memoir of Love & Revolution, Jeanne Córdova, Spinsters Ink
Paperback: 456 pages
Publisher: Spinsters Ink; 1 edition (November 29, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1935226517
ISBN-13: 978-1935226512
Amazon: When We Were Outlaws: A Memoir of Love & Revolution
A sweeping memoir, a raw and intimate chronicle of a young activist torn between conflicting personal longings and political goals. When We Were Outlaws offers a rare view of the life of a radical lesbian during the early cultural struggle for gay rights, Women’s Liberation, and the New Left of the 1970s. Brash and ambitious, activist Jeanne Córdova is living with one woman and falling in love with another, but her passionate beliefs tell her that her first duty is “to the revolution” -to change the world and end discrimination against gays and lesbians. Trying to compartmentalize her sexual life, she becomes an investigative reporter for the famous, underground L.A. Free Press and finds herself involved with covering the Weather Underground, Angela Davis; exposing neo-Nazi bomber Captain Joe Tomassi, and befriending Emily Harris of the Symbionese Liberation Army. At the same time she is creating what will be the center of her revolutionary lesbian world: her own newsmagazine, The Lesbian Tide, destined to become the voice of the national lesbian feminist movement. By turns provocative and daringly honest, Cordova renders emblematic scenes of the era-ranging from strike protests to utopian music festivals, to underground meetings with radical fugitives-with period detail and evocative characters. For those who came of age in the ‘70s, and for those who weren’t around but still ask ‘What was it like?’ -Outlaws takes you back to re-live it. It also offers insights about ethics, decision making and strategy, still relevant today. With an introduction by renowned lesbian historian Lillian Faderman, When We Were Outlaws paints a vivid portrait of activism and the search for self-identity, set against the turbulent landscape of multiple struggles for social change that swept hundreds of thousands of Americans into the streets.
Gay Memoir/Biography: The Jack Bank: A Memoir of a South African Childhood, by Glen Retief, St. Martin’s Press
Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; First Edition edition (April 24, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1250002745
ISBN-13: 978-1250002747
Amazon: The Jack Bank: A Memoir of a South African Childhood
An extraordinary, literary memoir from a gay white South African, coming of age at the end of apartheid in the late 1970s. Glen Retief's childhood was at once recognizably ordinary--and brutally unusual. Raised in the middle of a game preserve where his father worked, Retief's warm nuclear family was a preserve of its own, against chaotic forces just outside its borders: a childhood friend whose uncle led a death squad, while his cultured grandfather quoted Shakespeare at barbecues and abused Glen's sister in an antique-filled, tobacco-scented living room. But it was when Retief was sent to boarding school, that he was truly exposed to human cruelty and frailty. When the prefects were caught torturing younger boys, they invented "the jack bank," where underclassmen could save beatings, earn interest on their deposits, and draw on them later to atone for their supposed infractions. Retief writes movingly of the complicated emotions and politics in this punitive all-male world, and of how he navigated them, even as he began to realize that his sexuality was different than his peers'.
Lesbian Mystery: Dying to Live, by Kim Baldwin & Xenia Alexiou, Bold Strokes Books
Paperback: 264 pages
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books (February 15, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 160282200X
ISBN-13: 978-1602822009
Amazon: Dying to Live, by Kim Baldwin & Xenia Alexiou
British socialite Zoe Anderson-Howe's pampered life is abruptly shattered when she's taken hostage by FARC guerrillas while on a business trip to Bogota. While her father struggles to come up with the ransom, she must endure hardships that test her both mentally and physically. Elite Operative Fetch has been living in the Colombian jungle for six months on a mission to infiltrate the FARC and orchestrate the rescue of western hostages. When Zoe is added to her assignment, Fetch's sense of duty must override the disdain she initially feels for the self-indulgent tabloid queen. The task of freeing Zoe gains new urgency when it appears she may be the key to stopping a mysterious new virus that is racing across the globe, killing indiscriminately. The support Fetch counted on is needed elsewhere. Can she get Zoe out of there on her own, and will that be enough to save the millions of lives in peril? Fourth in the romantic intrigue series: Elite Operatives.
Gay Mystery: Red White Black and Blue, by Richard Stevenson, MLR Press
Paperback: 236 pages
Publisher: MLR Press (June 2, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 160820362X
ISBN-13: 978-1608203628
Amazon: Red White Black and Blue
In an election year, Don finds himself in the unlikely role of political operative. Rumors about the Tea Party's opportunistic gubernatorial candidate, Kenyon Louderbush, paint him as an unfaithful, callous exploiter of young men...young men that he puts into the hospital...or perhaps the morgue. Don smells truth in those rumors. But, he's confounded by a shadowy conspiracy, witnesses' fear and a grieving family appallingly willing to give up on justice for a brutalized son and brother. In RED WHITE AND BLACK AND BLUE, series creator Stevenson takes witty aim at the polarization, dissembling and double-dealing of American politics. It's a story that leaves even our hero, Don, tarnished and bruised.
LGBT Anthology: Gay Latino Studies: A Critical Reader, ed. by Michael Hames-García and Ernesto Javier Martínez, Duke University Press
Paperback: 376 pages
Publisher: Duke University Press Books (April 13, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0822349558
ISBN-13: 978-0822349556
Amazon: Gay Latino Studies: A Critical Reader
The authors of the essays in this unique collection explore the lives and cultural contributions of gay Latino men in the United States, while also analyzing the political and theoretical stakes of gay Latino studies. In new essays and influential previously published pieces, Latino scholars based in American studies, ethnic studies, history, performance studies, and sociology consider gay Latino scholarly and cultural work in relation to mainstream gay, lesbian, and queer academic discourses and the broader field of Chicano and Latino studies. They also critique cultural explanations of gay Latino sexual identity and behavior, examine artistic representations of queer Latinidad, and celebrate the place of dance in gay Latino culture. Designed to stimulate dialogue, the collection pairs each essay with a critical response by a prominent Latino/a or Chicana/o scholar. Terms such as gay, identity, queer, and visibility are contested throughout the volume; the significance of these debates is often brought to the fore in the commentaries. The essays in Gay Latino Studies complement and overlap with the groundbreaking work of lesbians of color and critical race theorists, as well as queer theorists and gay and lesbian studies scholars. Taken together, they offer much-needed insight into the lives and perspectives of gay, bisexual, and queer Latinos, and they renew attention to the politics of identity and coalition. Contributors. Tomás Almaguer, Luz Calvo, Lionel Cantú,, Daniel Contreras, Catriona Rueda Esquibel, Ramón García, Ramón A. Gutiérrez, Michael Hames-García, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, María Lugones, Ernesto J. Martínez, Paula M. L. Moya, José Esteban Muñoz, Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Ricardo L. Ortiz, Daniel Enrique Pérez, Ramón H. Rivera-Servera, Richard T. Rodríguez, David Román, Horacio N. Roque Ramírez, Antonio Viego.
LGBT Children’s/Young Adult: Putting Makeup on the Fat Boy, by Bil Wright, Simon & Schuster
Reading level: Ages 12 and up
Paperback: 240 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers (August 7, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1416940049
ISBN-13: 978-1416940043
Amazon: Putting Makeup on the Fat Boy
In this spirited exploration of strength and personality, a fabulous NYC teen knows he’s destined for greatness-if only he can survive his first job. Carlos Duarte knows that he’s fabulous. He’s got a better sense of style than half the fashionistas in New York City, and he can definitely apply makeup like nobody’s business. He may only be in high school, but when he lands the job of his dreams-makeup artist at the FeatureFace counter in Macy’s-he's sure that he’s finally on his way to great things. But the makeup artist world is competitive and cutthroat, and for Carlos to reach his dreams, he'll have to believe in himself more than ever.
LGBT Drama: A Menopausal Gentleman: The Solo Performances of Peggy Shaw, by Peggy Shaw, University of Michigan Press
Paperback: 178 pages
Publisher: University of Michigan Press (July 11, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0472034146
ISBN-13: 978-0472034147
Amazon: A Menopausal Gentleman: The Solo Performances of Peggy Shaw
Obie-award-winning performer and writer Peggy Shaw has been playing her gender-bending performances on Off Broadway, regional, and international stages for three decades. Co-founder of the renowned troupe Split Britches, Shaw has gone on to create memorable solo performances that mix achingly honest introspection with campy humor, reflecting on everything from her Irish-American working-class roots to her aging butch body. This collection of Shaw's solo performance scripts evokes a 54-year-old grandmother who looks like a 35-year-old man (in her classic Menopausal Gentleman); a mother's ambivalent ministrations to a daughter she treated like a son (in the raw You're Just Like My Father); Shaw's love for her biracial grandson, for whom she models masculinity (in the musically punctuated To My Chagrin); and a mapping of her body's long, bittersweet history (in the lyrical Must: The Inside Story, a collaboration with the UK's Clod Ensemble). The book also includes a selection of Shaw's other classic monologues and an extensive introduction by Jill Dolan, Professor of English and Theater and Dance at Princeton University and the blogger behind The Feminist Spectator website.
LGBT Nonfiction: A Queer History of the United States, by Michael Bronski, Beacon Press
Paperback: 312 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press (May 15, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0807044652
ISBN-13: 978-0807044650
Amazon: A Queer History of the United States
Winner of a 2012 Stonewall Book Award in nonfiction. A Queer History of the United States is more than a “who’s who” of queer history: it is a book that radically challenges how we understand American history. Drawing upon primary-source documents, literature, and cultural histories, scholar and activist Michael Bronski charts the breadth of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history, from 1492 to the 1990s.
LGBT SF/Fantasy/Horror: The German, by Lee Thomas, Lethe Press
Paperback: 290 pages
Publisher: Lethe Press (March 15, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1590213092
ISBN-13: 978-1590213094
Amazon: The German
Set during the height of World War II, The German examines the effect a series of ritualistic murders has on a small, Texas community. A killer preys on the young men of Barnard, Texas, leaving cryptic notes written in German. As the panic builds all eyes turn toward a quiet man with secrets of his own, who is trying to escape a violent past. Ernst Lang fled Germany in 1934. Once a brute, a soldier, a leader of the Nazi party, he has renounced aggression and embraces a peaceful obscurity. But Lang is haunted by an impossible past. He remembers his own execution and the extremes of sex and violence that led to it. He remembers the men he led into battle, the men he seduced, and the men who betrayed him. But are these the memories of a man given a second life, or the delusions of a lunatic? A finalist for the 2011 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel and the Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBT Science-fiction/Fantasy/Horror title.
LGBT Studies: Sister Arts: The Erotics of Lesbian Landscapes, by Lisa L. Moore, University of Minnesota Press
Paperback: 264 pages
Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press (May 12, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0816670145
ISBN-13: 978-0816670147
Amazon: Sister Arts: The Erotics of Lesbian Landscapes
In the great age of English garden design, eighteenth-century women working in the “sister arts” of painting, poetry, and landscape gardening adapted the Linnaean system of plant classification and the tradition of the erotic garden to create art with and for other women that celebrated everything from classical friendship to erotic love. In this book, filled with lush illustrations and intriguing stories, Lisa L. Moore reveals how these women artists used flowers, gardens, and landscapes to express their love for other women. Aristocratic diarist Mary Delany built a garden grotto for the exclusive use of herself and the naturalist and collector Margaret Bentinck, Duchess of Portland. Romantic poet Anna Seward, mourning the loss of Honora Sneyd to an unworthy marriage and then death, wrote her beloved’s face and body into her landscape poems. And in 1790s Connecticut, feminist intellectual Sarah Pierce transformed texts and images into a new poetic evocation of intimacy between women both egalitarian and erotic. These women, Moore shows, influenced later works by Emily Dickinson, Georgia O’Keeffe, Frida Kahlo, and Tee Corinne. Moore goes on to trace the legacy of the lesbian sister arts tradition in subsequent art and poetry, including contemporary multimedia work by Kara Walker, Michelene Thomas, Alma Lopez, and Allyson Mitchell. Her book redefines this unstudied sister arts tradition, which becomes visible only when we understand how the works of these women exemplify what she deems “lesbian genres.” It will captivate readers who want to know more about women’s contributions to garden history and landscape design-as well as those looking for a new perspective on queer history, literature, and culture.
Bisexual Fiction: The Correspondence Artist, by Barbara Browning, Two Dollar Radio
Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: Two Dollar Radio (March 1, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0982015194
ISBN-13: 978-0982015193
Amazon: The Correspondence Artist
Vivian, a writer, is carrying on a relationship with an internationally acclaimed artist. There are those who stand to profit-and suffer-from the revelation of her paramour's identity, so in the service of telling her tale, she creates a series of fictional lovers. There is Tzipi, a sixty-eight-year-old Nobel-winning female Israeli writer; Binh, a twenty-something Vietnamese video artist; Santuxto, a poetic Basque separatist; and Djeli, a dreadlocked Malian world-music star. Largely through Vivian's e-mail correspondence, she divulges the story of their relationship, from their first meeting to their jumpy spam filter, which arrests the more explicit notes that result in Vivian being held captive in a tiger cage in a Berlin hotel/being chased by a Medusa-like woman on a Greek Island/imprisoned by a splinter cell of Basque separatists/in an African hospital with a bout of Dengue Fever. Barbara Browning's captivating wit and passionate intelligence make The Correspondence Artist a love story like none other.
Bisexual Nonfiction: The Horizontal Poet, by Jan Steckel, Zeitgest Press
ISBN: 978-0-929730-94-3
Congratulations to Jan Steckel, nominated for a 2012 Lambda Literary Award! Copyright 2011. Jan Steckel is a retired Harvard and Yale trained pediatrician, an activist for bisexual and disability rights, a poet, and a writer. Her poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared widely. She is the recipient of the Gertrude Press Fiction Chapbook Award and a Rainbow Award for lesbian and bisexual poetry. She lives in Oakland, California with her husband, Hew Wolff.
Transgender Fiction: Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica, ed. by Tristan Taormino, Cleis Press
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Cleis Press; 1 edition (October 4, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 157344720X
ISBN-13: 978-1573447201
Amazon: Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica
In mainstream media, the erotic identities, sex lives, and fantasies of transgender and genderqueer people are often oversimplified, sensationalized, or invisible. Take Me There is an erotica collection unlike any other that celebrates the pleasure, heat, and diversity of transgender and genderqueer sexualities. The power of seeing and being seen is a central theme in the anthology; it’s not simply about passing or not passing (an idea often explored with transgender characters), but about being acknowledged and desired in a sexual context. The book takes you from San Francisco to Israel, from heartache to lust, from stranger sex to a 10 year anniversary, from ballet shoes to butt plug bondage tables, from fumbling teenagers to leatherclad bears, from MTF and FTM-and in between and beyond. Featuring renowned authors Kate Bornstein (Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation), Patrick Califia (Speaking Sex to Power), S. Bear Bergman (Butch is a Noun), Ivan Coyote (Missed Her), Julia Serrano (Whipping Girl), Laura Antoniou (The Marketplace), Helen Boyd (My Husband Betty), Rachel Kramer Bussel (Gotta Have It), Toni Amato (Pinned Down by Pronouns), Alicia E. Goranson (Supervillianz), filmmaker Tobi Hill-Meyer, musician Rahne Alexander, songwriter Shawna Virago, bloggers Andrea Zanin and Sinclair Sexsmith, and more.
Transgender Nonfiction: Tango: My Childhood Backwards and in High Heels, by Justin Vivian Bond, The Feminist Press
Paperback: 144 pages
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY; 1 edition (August 16, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1558617477
ISBN-13: 978-1558617476
Amazon: Tango: My Childhood Backwards and in High Heels
Recently hailed as "the greatest cabaret artist of [V's] generation" in The New Yorker, Mx. Justin Vivian Bond makes a brilliant literary debut with this staggeringly candid and hilarious novella-length memoir. With a recent diagnosis of attention deficit disorder, and news that his first lover from childhood has been imprisoned for impersonating an undercover police officer, Bond recalls in vivid detail coming of age as a trans kid. Always haunted by the knowledge of being "different," Bond was further confused when the bully next door wanted to meet secretly. Their trysts went on for years, and made Bond acutely aware of sexual power and vulnerability. With inimitable style, Bond raises issues about LGBTQ adolescence, homophobia, parenting, and sexuality, while being utterly entertaining. Singer, songwriter, and Tony-nominated performance artist Mx. Justin Vivian Bond is an Obie, Bessie, and Ethyl Eichelberger Award winner. As one half of the performance duo Kiki and Herb, Bond has toured the world, headlining at Carnegie Hall, the Sydney Opera House, and London's Queen Elizabeth Hall, and starring in a Tony nominated run on Broadway, Kiki and Herb Alive on Broadway. His film credits include a role in John Cameron Mitchell's feature Shortbus. Bond is currently releasing a record, Dendrophile, and is writing a play with Sandra Bernhard.
Lesbian Erotica: Story of L, by Debra Hyde, Ravenous Romance
Paperback: 274 pages
Publisher: Ravenous Romance (June 29, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1607779129
ISBN-13: 978-1607779124
Amazon: Story of L
Liv called her hunger The Void. She thought she knew it - and herself. Until a night with Cassandra silenced it. And brought out something in Liv she didn't think possible: submission. One taste of that, and Liv wanted more. But Cassandra isn't an easy dominant. She expects Liv to earn her way into her good graces. And her demands aren't simple. How many hurdles will Liv need to jump before she can kneel before Cassandra? Before Cassandra chooses to claim her? Just what will it take to become Cassandra's "L?" And will the outcome be all she hopes for - and needs? Find out in a timeless tale, retold. Find out in Story of L.
Gay Erotica: All Together, by Dirk Vanden, iloveyoudivine Alerotica
Paperback: 532 pages
Publisher: loveyoudivine Alterotica (August 11, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1600546307
ISBN-13: 978-1600546303
Amazon: All Together
Three seminal gay classics from the 1970’s, now together in one volume. I WANT IT ALL started out as a Gay Pulp, written for Frenchy’s Gay Line in 1969. It introduces Warren Miller, a young man exploring his sexuality in a changing world. The sequel, ALL THE WAY, follows the story of Bill Thorne, the best friend of Warren Miller, as he struggles to deal with his self image as a man of action, and reconcile that with his feelings for other men. The third and final part of the trilogy, ALL IS WELL, then picks up the tale of Bill Thorne’s brother, Robert, who raped Bill as a teenager, bringing all of the major characters back together for a truly climatic and thrilling ending.
Lesbian Poetry: Love Cake, by Leah Lakshmi Piepza-Samarasinha, TSAR Publications
Paperback: 112 pages
Publisher: TSAR Publications (September 30, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1894770692
ISBN-13: 978-1894770699
Amazon: Love Cake
Poetry. LGBT Studies. Asian American Studies. In these poems, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha explores how queer people of color resist and transform violence through love and desire. Remembering and testifying about the damage caused by the racial profiling of South Asian and Arab people post 9/11, border crossings and internal and external wars in Sri Lanka and the diaspora, LOVE CAKE also documents the persistence of survival and beauty-especially the dangerous beauty found in queer people of color loving and desiring. LOVE CAKE maps the joys and challenges of reclaiming the body and sexuality after violence, examining a family history of violence with compassion and celebrating the resilient, specific ways we create new families, take our bodies back, love, fight, and transform violence.
Gay Poetry: A Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos, ed. by David Trinidad, Nightboat Books
Paperback: 632 pages
Publisher: Nightboat Books (May 10, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0984459839
ISBN-13: 978-0984459834
Amazon: A Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos
Poetry. LGBT Studies. Edited by David Trinidad. A FAST LIFE establishes Tim Dlugos-the witty and innovative poet at the heart of the New York literary scene in the late 1970s and 1980s and seminal poet of the AIDS epidemic-as one of the most distinctive and energetic poets of our time. This definitive volume contains all of the poems Dlugos published in his lifetime, a wealth of previously unpublished poems, and an informative introduction, chronology, and notes assembled by the volume's editor, poet David Trinidad. "The Frank O'Hara of his generation"-Ted Berrigan.
Lesbian Romance: Taken by Surprise, by Kenna White, Bella Books
Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: Bella Books (November 8, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1594932689
ISBN-13: 978-1594932687
Amazon: Taken by Surprise
Snow is falling around the Aspen cabin that Leigh Insley never has time to visit. As winter gathers closer she wonders if it might finally be time to sell her getaway retreat. It’s only a few hours from Denver, true, but her career as a corporate lawyer has left her little time to enjoy it, and the years have ticked by, almost unnoticed. Snow and ice are part of Margo Tosch. She’s been on skis since she could strap them to her boots, and her love of the sport has taken her around the world. Now, as snowplow driver, ski instructor and shopkeeper, this Jill-of-all-trades has carved a life for herself and her daughter in the mountains she loves, where the isolation lets her keep her secrets to herself. When their paths cross in the high-mountain air, city-dweller Leigh is certain she has nothing in common with this rustic mountain woman named Margo. But even the frostiest of hearts can be taken by surprise. Bestselling author Kenna White (Body Language) warms the rugged mountains of Colorado with a smoldering love story.
Gay Romance: Every Time I Think of You, by Jim Provenzano, CreateSpace/Myrmidude Press
Paperback: 264 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace; 1st edition (December 3, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1463778643
ISBN-13: 978-1463778644
Amazon: Every Time I Think of You
After an abrupt encounter in a small woods of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, Reid Conniff, a shy and studious high school distance runner, becomes swept up in the adventurous world of Everett Forrester, a privileged and capricious charmer. Overcoming the distance of their separate schools, parental interference, and a nearly fatal accident, the two young men find a way to be together in spite of their own doubts and fears. Set in 1979-1980, Every Time I Think of You recalls a halcyon era in America's past with a personal voice.
Congrats to all the winners, glad for Dirk Vanden and Jim Provenzano, this year it was hard to choose among friends with a nomination :-) Very happy for Laura Baumbach and her MLR Press, Steve Berman and Lethe Press, and for Bold Strokes Books, and nice to see that Farzana Doctor succeded in the Lammies like she did with the Rainbow Awards last year. Very deserved Michael Bronski's award, I love A Queer History of United States.
Lesbian Fiction: Six Metres of Pavement, by Farzana Doctor, Dundrun Press
Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Dundurn (February 17, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1554887674
ISBN-13: 978-1554887675
Amazon: Six Metres of Pavement
Ismail Boxwala made the worst mistake of his life one summer morning twenty years ago: he forgot his baby daughter in the back seat of his car. After his daughter's tragic death, he struggles to continue living. A divorce, years of heavy drinking, and sex with strangers only leave him more alone and isolated. But Ismail's story begins to change after he reluctantly befriends two women: Fatima, a young queer activist kicked out of her parents' home; and Celia, his grieving Portuguese-Canadian neighbour who lives just six metres away. A slow-simmering romance develops between Ismail and Celia. Meanwhile, dangers lead Fatima to his doorstep. Each makes complicated demands of him, ones he is uncertain he can meet.
Gay Fiction: The Empty Family, by Colm Tóibín, Scribner
Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: Scribner (January 3, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 143919596X
ISBN-13: 978-1439195963
Amazon: The Empty Family
Colm Tóibín’s exquisitely written new stories, set in present-day Ireland, 1970s Spain and nineteenthcentury England, are about people linked by love, loneliness and desire. Tóibín is a master at portraying mute emotion, intense intimacies that remain unacknowledged or unspoken. In this stunning collection, he cements his status as “his generation’s most gifted writer of love’s complicated, contradictory power” (Los Angeles Times). “Silence” is a brilliant historical set piece about Lady Gregory, widowed and abandoned by her lover, who tells the writer Henry James a confessional story at a dinner party. In “Two Women,” an eminent Irish set designer, aloof and prickly, takes a job in her homeland, and is forced to confront devastating emotions she has long repressed. “The New Spain” is the story of an intransigent woman who returns home after a decade in exile and shatters the fragile peace her family has forged in the post-Franco world. And in the breathtaking long story “The Street,” Tóibín imagines a startling relationship between two Pakistani workers in Barcelona-a taboo affair in a community ruled by obedience and silence. Tóibín’s characters are often difficult and combative, compelled to disguise their vulnerability and longings. Yet he unmasks them, and in doing so offers us a set of extraordinarily moving stories that remind us of the fragility and individuality of human life. As The New York Review of Books has said, Tóibín “understands the tenuousness of love and comfort-and, after everything, its necessity.”
Lesbian Debut Fiction: Zipper Mouth, by Laurie Weeks, The Feminist Press
Paperback: 166 pages
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY (October 4, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1558617485
ISBN-13: 978-1558617483
Amazon: Zipper Mouth
Selected by Dave Eggers for Best American Nonrequired Reading. "Laurie Weeks' Zipper Mouth is a short tome of infinitesimal reach, a tiny star to light the land."-Eileen Myles, author of Inferno. Zipper Mouth is a brilliant rabbit hole of pitch-black hilarity, undead obsession, the horror of the everyday, and drugs drugs drugs."-Michelle Tea, co-founder of Sister Spit. In this extraordinary debut novel, Laurie Weeks captures the freedom and longing of life on the edge in New York City. Ranting letters to Judy Davis and Sylvia Plath, an unrequited fixation on a straight best friend, exalted nightclub epiphanies, devastating morning-after hangovers-Zipper Mouth chronicles the exuberance and mortification of a junkie, and transcends the chaos of everyday life.
Gay Debut Fiction: Quarantine: Stories, by Rahul Mehta, Harper Perennial
Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Harper Perennial; Original edition (May 31, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0062020455
ISBN-13: 978-0062020451
Amazon: Quarantine: Stories
With buoyant humor and incisive, cunning prose, Rahul Mehta sets off into uncharted literary territory. The characters in Quarantine-openly gay Indian-American men-are Westernized in some ways, with cosmopolitan views on friendship and sex, while struggling to maintain relationships with their families and cultural traditions. Grappling with the issues that concern all gay men-social acceptance, the right to pursue happiness, and the heavy toll of listening to their hearts and bodies-they confront an elder generation's attachment to old-country ways. Estranged from their cultural in-group and still set apart from larger society, the young men in these lyrical, provocative, emotionally wrenching, yet frequently funny stories find themselves quarantined. Already a runaway success in India, Quarantine marks the debut of a unique literary talent.
Lesbian Memoir/Biography: When We Were Outlaws: A Memoir of Love & Revolution, Jeanne Córdova, Spinsters Ink
Paperback: 456 pages
Publisher: Spinsters Ink; 1 edition (November 29, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1935226517
ISBN-13: 978-1935226512
Amazon: When We Were Outlaws: A Memoir of Love & Revolution
A sweeping memoir, a raw and intimate chronicle of a young activist torn between conflicting personal longings and political goals. When We Were Outlaws offers a rare view of the life of a radical lesbian during the early cultural struggle for gay rights, Women’s Liberation, and the New Left of the 1970s. Brash and ambitious, activist Jeanne Córdova is living with one woman and falling in love with another, but her passionate beliefs tell her that her first duty is “to the revolution” -to change the world and end discrimination against gays and lesbians. Trying to compartmentalize her sexual life, she becomes an investigative reporter for the famous, underground L.A. Free Press and finds herself involved with covering the Weather Underground, Angela Davis; exposing neo-Nazi bomber Captain Joe Tomassi, and befriending Emily Harris of the Symbionese Liberation Army. At the same time she is creating what will be the center of her revolutionary lesbian world: her own newsmagazine, The Lesbian Tide, destined to become the voice of the national lesbian feminist movement. By turns provocative and daringly honest, Cordova renders emblematic scenes of the era-ranging from strike protests to utopian music festivals, to underground meetings with radical fugitives-with period detail and evocative characters. For those who came of age in the ‘70s, and for those who weren’t around but still ask ‘What was it like?’ -Outlaws takes you back to re-live it. It also offers insights about ethics, decision making and strategy, still relevant today. With an introduction by renowned lesbian historian Lillian Faderman, When We Were Outlaws paints a vivid portrait of activism and the search for self-identity, set against the turbulent landscape of multiple struggles for social change that swept hundreds of thousands of Americans into the streets.
Gay Memoir/Biography: The Jack Bank: A Memoir of a South African Childhood, by Glen Retief, St. Martin’s Press
Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; First Edition edition (April 24, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1250002745
ISBN-13: 978-1250002747
Amazon: The Jack Bank: A Memoir of a South African Childhood
An extraordinary, literary memoir from a gay white South African, coming of age at the end of apartheid in the late 1970s. Glen Retief's childhood was at once recognizably ordinary--and brutally unusual. Raised in the middle of a game preserve where his father worked, Retief's warm nuclear family was a preserve of its own, against chaotic forces just outside its borders: a childhood friend whose uncle led a death squad, while his cultured grandfather quoted Shakespeare at barbecues and abused Glen's sister in an antique-filled, tobacco-scented living room. But it was when Retief was sent to boarding school, that he was truly exposed to human cruelty and frailty. When the prefects were caught torturing younger boys, they invented "the jack bank," where underclassmen could save beatings, earn interest on their deposits, and draw on them later to atone for their supposed infractions. Retief writes movingly of the complicated emotions and politics in this punitive all-male world, and of how he navigated them, even as he began to realize that his sexuality was different than his peers'.
Lesbian Mystery: Dying to Live, by Kim Baldwin & Xenia Alexiou, Bold Strokes Books
Paperback: 264 pages
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books (February 15, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 160282200X
ISBN-13: 978-1602822009
Amazon: Dying to Live, by Kim Baldwin & Xenia Alexiou
British socialite Zoe Anderson-Howe's pampered life is abruptly shattered when she's taken hostage by FARC guerrillas while on a business trip to Bogota. While her father struggles to come up with the ransom, she must endure hardships that test her both mentally and physically. Elite Operative Fetch has been living in the Colombian jungle for six months on a mission to infiltrate the FARC and orchestrate the rescue of western hostages. When Zoe is added to her assignment, Fetch's sense of duty must override the disdain she initially feels for the self-indulgent tabloid queen. The task of freeing Zoe gains new urgency when it appears she may be the key to stopping a mysterious new virus that is racing across the globe, killing indiscriminately. The support Fetch counted on is needed elsewhere. Can she get Zoe out of there on her own, and will that be enough to save the millions of lives in peril? Fourth in the romantic intrigue series: Elite Operatives.
Gay Mystery: Red White Black and Blue, by Richard Stevenson, MLR Press
Paperback: 236 pages
Publisher: MLR Press (June 2, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 160820362X
ISBN-13: 978-1608203628
Amazon: Red White Black and Blue
In an election year, Don finds himself in the unlikely role of political operative. Rumors about the Tea Party's opportunistic gubernatorial candidate, Kenyon Louderbush, paint him as an unfaithful, callous exploiter of young men...young men that he puts into the hospital...or perhaps the morgue. Don smells truth in those rumors. But, he's confounded by a shadowy conspiracy, witnesses' fear and a grieving family appallingly willing to give up on justice for a brutalized son and brother. In RED WHITE AND BLACK AND BLUE, series creator Stevenson takes witty aim at the polarization, dissembling and double-dealing of American politics. It's a story that leaves even our hero, Don, tarnished and bruised.
LGBT Anthology: Gay Latino Studies: A Critical Reader, ed. by Michael Hames-García and Ernesto Javier Martínez, Duke University Press
Paperback: 376 pages
Publisher: Duke University Press Books (April 13, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0822349558
ISBN-13: 978-0822349556
Amazon: Gay Latino Studies: A Critical Reader
The authors of the essays in this unique collection explore the lives and cultural contributions of gay Latino men in the United States, while also analyzing the political and theoretical stakes of gay Latino studies. In new essays and influential previously published pieces, Latino scholars based in American studies, ethnic studies, history, performance studies, and sociology consider gay Latino scholarly and cultural work in relation to mainstream gay, lesbian, and queer academic discourses and the broader field of Chicano and Latino studies. They also critique cultural explanations of gay Latino sexual identity and behavior, examine artistic representations of queer Latinidad, and celebrate the place of dance in gay Latino culture. Designed to stimulate dialogue, the collection pairs each essay with a critical response by a prominent Latino/a or Chicana/o scholar. Terms such as gay, identity, queer, and visibility are contested throughout the volume; the significance of these debates is often brought to the fore in the commentaries. The essays in Gay Latino Studies complement and overlap with the groundbreaking work of lesbians of color and critical race theorists, as well as queer theorists and gay and lesbian studies scholars. Taken together, they offer much-needed insight into the lives and perspectives of gay, bisexual, and queer Latinos, and they renew attention to the politics of identity and coalition. Contributors. Tomás Almaguer, Luz Calvo, Lionel Cantú,, Daniel Contreras, Catriona Rueda Esquibel, Ramón García, Ramón A. Gutiérrez, Michael Hames-García, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, María Lugones, Ernesto J. Martínez, Paula M. L. Moya, José Esteban Muñoz, Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Ricardo L. Ortiz, Daniel Enrique Pérez, Ramón H. Rivera-Servera, Richard T. Rodríguez, David Román, Horacio N. Roque Ramírez, Antonio Viego.
LGBT Children’s/Young Adult: Putting Makeup on the Fat Boy, by Bil Wright, Simon & Schuster
Reading level: Ages 12 and up
Paperback: 240 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers (August 7, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1416940049
ISBN-13: 978-1416940043
Amazon: Putting Makeup on the Fat Boy
In this spirited exploration of strength and personality, a fabulous NYC teen knows he’s destined for greatness-if only he can survive his first job. Carlos Duarte knows that he’s fabulous. He’s got a better sense of style than half the fashionistas in New York City, and he can definitely apply makeup like nobody’s business. He may only be in high school, but when he lands the job of his dreams-makeup artist at the FeatureFace counter in Macy’s-he's sure that he’s finally on his way to great things. But the makeup artist world is competitive and cutthroat, and for Carlos to reach his dreams, he'll have to believe in himself more than ever.
LGBT Drama: A Menopausal Gentleman: The Solo Performances of Peggy Shaw, by Peggy Shaw, University of Michigan Press
Paperback: 178 pages
Publisher: University of Michigan Press (July 11, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0472034146
ISBN-13: 978-0472034147
Amazon: A Menopausal Gentleman: The Solo Performances of Peggy Shaw
Obie-award-winning performer and writer Peggy Shaw has been playing her gender-bending performances on Off Broadway, regional, and international stages for three decades. Co-founder of the renowned troupe Split Britches, Shaw has gone on to create memorable solo performances that mix achingly honest introspection with campy humor, reflecting on everything from her Irish-American working-class roots to her aging butch body. This collection of Shaw's solo performance scripts evokes a 54-year-old grandmother who looks like a 35-year-old man (in her classic Menopausal Gentleman); a mother's ambivalent ministrations to a daughter she treated like a son (in the raw You're Just Like My Father); Shaw's love for her biracial grandson, for whom she models masculinity (in the musically punctuated To My Chagrin); and a mapping of her body's long, bittersweet history (in the lyrical Must: The Inside Story, a collaboration with the UK's Clod Ensemble). The book also includes a selection of Shaw's other classic monologues and an extensive introduction by Jill Dolan, Professor of English and Theater and Dance at Princeton University and the blogger behind The Feminist Spectator website.
LGBT Nonfiction: A Queer History of the United States, by Michael Bronski, Beacon Press
Paperback: 312 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press (May 15, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0807044652
ISBN-13: 978-0807044650
Amazon: A Queer History of the United States
Winner of a 2012 Stonewall Book Award in nonfiction. A Queer History of the United States is more than a “who’s who” of queer history: it is a book that radically challenges how we understand American history. Drawing upon primary-source documents, literature, and cultural histories, scholar and activist Michael Bronski charts the breadth of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history, from 1492 to the 1990s.
LGBT SF/Fantasy/Horror: The German, by Lee Thomas, Lethe Press
Paperback: 290 pages
Publisher: Lethe Press (March 15, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1590213092
ISBN-13: 978-1590213094
Amazon: The German
Set during the height of World War II, The German examines the effect a series of ritualistic murders has on a small, Texas community. A killer preys on the young men of Barnard, Texas, leaving cryptic notes written in German. As the panic builds all eyes turn toward a quiet man with secrets of his own, who is trying to escape a violent past. Ernst Lang fled Germany in 1934. Once a brute, a soldier, a leader of the Nazi party, he has renounced aggression and embraces a peaceful obscurity. But Lang is haunted by an impossible past. He remembers his own execution and the extremes of sex and violence that led to it. He remembers the men he led into battle, the men he seduced, and the men who betrayed him. But are these the memories of a man given a second life, or the delusions of a lunatic? A finalist for the 2011 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel and the Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBT Science-fiction/Fantasy/Horror title.
LGBT Studies: Sister Arts: The Erotics of Lesbian Landscapes, by Lisa L. Moore, University of Minnesota Press
Paperback: 264 pages
Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press (May 12, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0816670145
ISBN-13: 978-0816670147
Amazon: Sister Arts: The Erotics of Lesbian Landscapes
In the great age of English garden design, eighteenth-century women working in the “sister arts” of painting, poetry, and landscape gardening adapted the Linnaean system of plant classification and the tradition of the erotic garden to create art with and for other women that celebrated everything from classical friendship to erotic love. In this book, filled with lush illustrations and intriguing stories, Lisa L. Moore reveals how these women artists used flowers, gardens, and landscapes to express their love for other women. Aristocratic diarist Mary Delany built a garden grotto for the exclusive use of herself and the naturalist and collector Margaret Bentinck, Duchess of Portland. Romantic poet Anna Seward, mourning the loss of Honora Sneyd to an unworthy marriage and then death, wrote her beloved’s face and body into her landscape poems. And in 1790s Connecticut, feminist intellectual Sarah Pierce transformed texts and images into a new poetic evocation of intimacy between women both egalitarian and erotic. These women, Moore shows, influenced later works by Emily Dickinson, Georgia O’Keeffe, Frida Kahlo, and Tee Corinne. Moore goes on to trace the legacy of the lesbian sister arts tradition in subsequent art and poetry, including contemporary multimedia work by Kara Walker, Michelene Thomas, Alma Lopez, and Allyson Mitchell. Her book redefines this unstudied sister arts tradition, which becomes visible only when we understand how the works of these women exemplify what she deems “lesbian genres.” It will captivate readers who want to know more about women’s contributions to garden history and landscape design-as well as those looking for a new perspective on queer history, literature, and culture.
Bisexual Fiction: The Correspondence Artist, by Barbara Browning, Two Dollar Radio
Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: Two Dollar Radio (March 1, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0982015194
ISBN-13: 978-0982015193
Amazon: The Correspondence Artist
Vivian, a writer, is carrying on a relationship with an internationally acclaimed artist. There are those who stand to profit-and suffer-from the revelation of her paramour's identity, so in the service of telling her tale, she creates a series of fictional lovers. There is Tzipi, a sixty-eight-year-old Nobel-winning female Israeli writer; Binh, a twenty-something Vietnamese video artist; Santuxto, a poetic Basque separatist; and Djeli, a dreadlocked Malian world-music star. Largely through Vivian's e-mail correspondence, she divulges the story of their relationship, from their first meeting to their jumpy spam filter, which arrests the more explicit notes that result in Vivian being held captive in a tiger cage in a Berlin hotel/being chased by a Medusa-like woman on a Greek Island/imprisoned by a splinter cell of Basque separatists/in an African hospital with a bout of Dengue Fever. Barbara Browning's captivating wit and passionate intelligence make The Correspondence Artist a love story like none other.
Bisexual Nonfiction: The Horizontal Poet, by Jan Steckel, Zeitgest Press
ISBN: 978-0-929730-94-3
Congratulations to Jan Steckel, nominated for a 2012 Lambda Literary Award! Copyright 2011. Jan Steckel is a retired Harvard and Yale trained pediatrician, an activist for bisexual and disability rights, a poet, and a writer. Her poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared widely. She is the recipient of the Gertrude Press Fiction Chapbook Award and a Rainbow Award for lesbian and bisexual poetry. She lives in Oakland, California with her husband, Hew Wolff.
Transgender Fiction: Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica, ed. by Tristan Taormino, Cleis Press
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Cleis Press; 1 edition (October 4, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 157344720X
ISBN-13: 978-1573447201
Amazon: Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica
In mainstream media, the erotic identities, sex lives, and fantasies of transgender and genderqueer people are often oversimplified, sensationalized, or invisible. Take Me There is an erotica collection unlike any other that celebrates the pleasure, heat, and diversity of transgender and genderqueer sexualities. The power of seeing and being seen is a central theme in the anthology; it’s not simply about passing or not passing (an idea often explored with transgender characters), but about being acknowledged and desired in a sexual context. The book takes you from San Francisco to Israel, from heartache to lust, from stranger sex to a 10 year anniversary, from ballet shoes to butt plug bondage tables, from fumbling teenagers to leatherclad bears, from MTF and FTM-and in between and beyond. Featuring renowned authors Kate Bornstein (Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation), Patrick Califia (Speaking Sex to Power), S. Bear Bergman (Butch is a Noun), Ivan Coyote (Missed Her), Julia Serrano (Whipping Girl), Laura Antoniou (The Marketplace), Helen Boyd (My Husband Betty), Rachel Kramer Bussel (Gotta Have It), Toni Amato (Pinned Down by Pronouns), Alicia E. Goranson (Supervillianz), filmmaker Tobi Hill-Meyer, musician Rahne Alexander, songwriter Shawna Virago, bloggers Andrea Zanin and Sinclair Sexsmith, and more.
Transgender Nonfiction: Tango: My Childhood Backwards and in High Heels, by Justin Vivian Bond, The Feminist Press
Paperback: 144 pages
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY; 1 edition (August 16, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1558617477
ISBN-13: 978-1558617476
Amazon: Tango: My Childhood Backwards and in High Heels
Recently hailed as "the greatest cabaret artist of [V's] generation" in The New Yorker, Mx. Justin Vivian Bond makes a brilliant literary debut with this staggeringly candid and hilarious novella-length memoir. With a recent diagnosis of attention deficit disorder, and news that his first lover from childhood has been imprisoned for impersonating an undercover police officer, Bond recalls in vivid detail coming of age as a trans kid. Always haunted by the knowledge of being "different," Bond was further confused when the bully next door wanted to meet secretly. Their trysts went on for years, and made Bond acutely aware of sexual power and vulnerability. With inimitable style, Bond raises issues about LGBTQ adolescence, homophobia, parenting, and sexuality, while being utterly entertaining. Singer, songwriter, and Tony-nominated performance artist Mx. Justin Vivian Bond is an Obie, Bessie, and Ethyl Eichelberger Award winner. As one half of the performance duo Kiki and Herb, Bond has toured the world, headlining at Carnegie Hall, the Sydney Opera House, and London's Queen Elizabeth Hall, and starring in a Tony nominated run on Broadway, Kiki and Herb Alive on Broadway. His film credits include a role in John Cameron Mitchell's feature Shortbus. Bond is currently releasing a record, Dendrophile, and is writing a play with Sandra Bernhard.
Lesbian Erotica: Story of L, by Debra Hyde, Ravenous Romance
Paperback: 274 pages
Publisher: Ravenous Romance (June 29, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1607779129
ISBN-13: 978-1607779124
Amazon: Story of L
Liv called her hunger The Void. She thought she knew it - and herself. Until a night with Cassandra silenced it. And brought out something in Liv she didn't think possible: submission. One taste of that, and Liv wanted more. But Cassandra isn't an easy dominant. She expects Liv to earn her way into her good graces. And her demands aren't simple. How many hurdles will Liv need to jump before she can kneel before Cassandra? Before Cassandra chooses to claim her? Just what will it take to become Cassandra's "L?" And will the outcome be all she hopes for - and needs? Find out in a timeless tale, retold. Find out in Story of L.
Gay Erotica: All Together, by Dirk Vanden, iloveyoudivine Alerotica
Paperback: 532 pages
Publisher: loveyoudivine Alterotica (August 11, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1600546307
ISBN-13: 978-1600546303
Amazon: All Together
Three seminal gay classics from the 1970’s, now together in one volume. I WANT IT ALL started out as a Gay Pulp, written for Frenchy’s Gay Line in 1969. It introduces Warren Miller, a young man exploring his sexuality in a changing world. The sequel, ALL THE WAY, follows the story of Bill Thorne, the best friend of Warren Miller, as he struggles to deal with his self image as a man of action, and reconcile that with his feelings for other men. The third and final part of the trilogy, ALL IS WELL, then picks up the tale of Bill Thorne’s brother, Robert, who raped Bill as a teenager, bringing all of the major characters back together for a truly climatic and thrilling ending.
Lesbian Poetry: Love Cake, by Leah Lakshmi Piepza-Samarasinha, TSAR Publications
Paperback: 112 pages
Publisher: TSAR Publications (September 30, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1894770692
ISBN-13: 978-1894770699
Amazon: Love Cake
Poetry. LGBT Studies. Asian American Studies. In these poems, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha explores how queer people of color resist and transform violence through love and desire. Remembering and testifying about the damage caused by the racial profiling of South Asian and Arab people post 9/11, border crossings and internal and external wars in Sri Lanka and the diaspora, LOVE CAKE also documents the persistence of survival and beauty-especially the dangerous beauty found in queer people of color loving and desiring. LOVE CAKE maps the joys and challenges of reclaiming the body and sexuality after violence, examining a family history of violence with compassion and celebrating the resilient, specific ways we create new families, take our bodies back, love, fight, and transform violence.
Gay Poetry: A Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos, ed. by David Trinidad, Nightboat Books
Paperback: 632 pages
Publisher: Nightboat Books (May 10, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0984459839
ISBN-13: 978-0984459834
Amazon: A Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos
Poetry. LGBT Studies. Edited by David Trinidad. A FAST LIFE establishes Tim Dlugos-the witty and innovative poet at the heart of the New York literary scene in the late 1970s and 1980s and seminal poet of the AIDS epidemic-as one of the most distinctive and energetic poets of our time. This definitive volume contains all of the poems Dlugos published in his lifetime, a wealth of previously unpublished poems, and an informative introduction, chronology, and notes assembled by the volume's editor, poet David Trinidad. "The Frank O'Hara of his generation"-Ted Berrigan.
Lesbian Romance: Taken by Surprise, by Kenna White, Bella Books
Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: Bella Books (November 8, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1594932689
ISBN-13: 978-1594932687
Amazon: Taken by Surprise
Snow is falling around the Aspen cabin that Leigh Insley never has time to visit. As winter gathers closer she wonders if it might finally be time to sell her getaway retreat. It’s only a few hours from Denver, true, but her career as a corporate lawyer has left her little time to enjoy it, and the years have ticked by, almost unnoticed. Snow and ice are part of Margo Tosch. She’s been on skis since she could strap them to her boots, and her love of the sport has taken her around the world. Now, as snowplow driver, ski instructor and shopkeeper, this Jill-of-all-trades has carved a life for herself and her daughter in the mountains she loves, where the isolation lets her keep her secrets to herself. When their paths cross in the high-mountain air, city-dweller Leigh is certain she has nothing in common with this rustic mountain woman named Margo. But even the frostiest of hearts can be taken by surprise. Bestselling author Kenna White (Body Language) warms the rugged mountains of Colorado with a smoldering love story.
Gay Romance: Every Time I Think of You, by Jim Provenzano, CreateSpace/Myrmidude Press
Paperback: 264 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace; 1st edition (December 3, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1463778643
ISBN-13: 978-1463778644
Amazon: Every Time I Think of You
After an abrupt encounter in a small woods of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, Reid Conniff, a shy and studious high school distance runner, becomes swept up in the adventurous world of Everett Forrester, a privileged and capricious charmer. Overcoming the distance of their separate schools, parental interference, and a nearly fatal accident, the two young men find a way to be together in spite of their own doubts and fears. Set in 1979-1980, Every Time I Think of You recalls a halcyon era in America's past with a personal voice.